The founder was John Thomas Stokes (1860-1939).  He was the son Jeremiah Stokes (1838-1897) and his wife, Sarah Ann née Wright.  Jeremiah was an electro-plate finisher, who had been born in Birmingham, but whose family had moved to Sheffield soon after his birth.  Jeremiah was the brother of Charles Stokes, an electro-plate manufacturer at Shoreham Street.

John Thomas followed in the trade as a silver buffer.  In 1885, he married Emily née Thompson.  Their daughter, Elsie, married Frank Ayres at Sharrow in 1914.  Ayres, the son of the late H. E. Ayres of Egypt, had been born at Norwich in 1886 (Sheffield Daily Independent, 11 February 1914).  He was a motor car driver.  After the War, Stokes was a silver finisher at Eldon Street.  In 1922, Stokes, Ayres & Co appeared in a directory as a silver finisher at the same address.  John T. Stokes and Frank Ayres were the partners.  By 1924, the address was 36 Matilda Street.  A report of a fire in the buffing shop gave a precise location: the third floor of Auckland Works, at the corner of Union Lane and Matilda Street, in premises which contained 114 tenement workshops (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 21 December 1925).  

By the end of the 1920s, John Thomas’s son, Frederick Jeremiah Stokes (1892-1971), became a partner.  In early 1930s, the firm’s address was Earl Street.  It sold cutlery and electro-plated flatware (forks, spoons, and fruit servers) to the retail trade.  One customer was the Derbyshire retailer T. Greaves & Co Ltd, which sold Stokes, Ayres & Co’s cutlery canteens, which contained knives marked ‘Firth Brearley Stainless Steel’.  Apparently, Stokes, Ayres & Co used the trade mark ‘NABOB’ – formerly owned by Walter Belk & Sons.

John Thomas Stokes, of Swaledale Road, died on 11 January 1939.  He left £1,625 (net personalty £1,594).  Obituaries noted that he was a shareholder and a founder of Sheffield United FC (Sheffield Telegraph & Daily Independent, 13, 16 January 1939).  His son, F. J. Stokes, continued the firm.  Ayres seems to have left the business: in the Census (1939) he was working as a garage mechanic.  Apparently, Stokes, Ayres & Co ceased trading in 1942.